Saturday, 10 March 2012

Chris Meloni Lists Midtown Manhattan Aerie

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Let's begin the week with a shameless piggyback on all the many New York City (and beyond) property gossips who have already much discussed the Midtown Manhattan aerie Emmy-nominated actor Christopher Meloni and his designer-set decorator-artist wife Sherman recently heaved on the market with an impressive 8-figure asking price of $12,000,000.

Man-hunky Mister Meloni didn't first prick up the ears?not to mention other things?of television watchers in the late 1990s as hard charging detective Eliot Stabler on the long-running and excessively syndicated thus ridiculously lucrative Law& Order: Special Victims Unit but rather as the master manipulator, and (bi)sexually seductive murderer Chris Keller on the long-ago canceled HBO series Oz. Much to the giddy delight of far too many ladies and gays to count, corporeally feasty Mister Meloni regularly bared his classically-shaped bubble booty on Oz and at least once went?oh yes he did, children?full frontal in his extremely well put together altogether.

Mister Meloni left his bread and butter gig at L&O:SVU last year (2011) after 12 seasons and can currently be seen on the boob-toob in True Blood. The television star doesn't do just television and will soon be seen on the silver screen with prominent roles in a number of upcoming movies including 42 with Oscar-nominated Harrison Ford. He's also set to appear in the upcoming Superman movie Man of Steel, this one starring?can we talk about it??Kevin Costner and Russell Crowe. For what it's worth?and it ain't worth a piddly squat of beans?we can assure the children Your Mama will avoid that particular movie with the same sort of feverish vigor we muster in order to steer clear of our increasingly creepy Aunt Mary-Nancy who will corner a less than vigilant conversation victim during a holiday gathering in a dimly lit hallway or laundry room and murmur and slur for 45 minutes about multi-vitamins and cat fur.

Anyhoodles poodles, our familial oddities aside, listing information shows the 60th-floor, highly stylized and luxuriously appointed 3 bedroom and 4.5 bathroom condo crib measures a decent but hardly huge 2,977 square feet and comes with brawny common charges and taxes that total $6,539 per month. A little clickin' and clackin' of the tired ol' beads on Your Mama's bejeweled abacus tabulates Mister Meloni's modern aerie at the full-service and celebrity-friendly Park Imperial building is currently priced at a sky-high but hardly unheard of $4,030 per square foot.

Property records reveal Mister Meloni and his stunning, crop-haired missus Sherman picked up the L-shaped apartment in June 2005 for $5,450,000, an amount our bejeweled abacus calculates at $1,830 per square foot. We'll let those with more expertise (and stronger opinions) decide if the subsequent architectural and decorative overhaul (and the intervening 7 years) justifies the doubling-and-then-some of the apartment's value.

The high-rise residence was photographed for the March 2008 issue of Architectural Digestwho titled their article Dramatic Gesture Above the City?which it is?and credits Missus Meloni as the designer and decorator of the polished and posh but still kick-up-your feet friendly interior spaces that hover thrillingly over Central Park.

The living and entertaining spaces anchor the hub of the two-spoked, corner layout and encompass an unexpectedly large and essentially square, bedroom-sized foyer where a giant sitting Buddha greets residents and guests. There's a nearby (and windowless) powder pooper and a 400-plus square foot corner living/dining room with two full walls of floor-to-ceiling windows and?seriously kittens?holy fookin' crap city and park views. There's but four, swiveling eggshell-colored leather armchairs in the living room and the adjacent den/family room is outfitted with steely blue silk wall coverings, a room-wide, midnight blue velvet sectional sofa, wood waterfall-style coffee table(s), and an over-sized flat-screen tee-vee smartly and discreetly recessed into the wall.

The kitchen, small by suburban mansion standards and generous by Manhattan standards, was opened up to the main living/dining space so that it too could take advantage of the staggering view of the park over the dining and living areas. The kitchen's finishes are decidedly sleek and contemporary with Euro- and commercial-style stainless steel appliances and white?or near white?counter tops warmed up with flat-fronted sapele cabinets and cherry wood and blue glass back splashes. A

One wing contains two decent-sized guest/family bedrooms, both with toe tingling park views, one with a walk in closet, and each with private (and windowless) lavatory. Well situated for maximum privacy at the opposite end of the apartment, the master suite includes a long, right-angled corridor lined with five closets?three of them walk-ins?and a pair of (windowless) bathrooms, one equipped with bidet and separate tub and shower. The deluxe retreat includes a sizable sitting room/office/library with custom-built bookshelves and desk and a bedroom where two entire walls of floor-to-ceiling windows give the spectacular illusion of floating over the city and the park.

Your Mama genuinely appreciates Missus Meloni's incorporation of all the wood elements and richly textural materials. We're totally down with her decision not to mimic the frenetic energy of New York City but instead to fashion a calm and fuzzy retreat from the screeching (and magnificent) urban chaos that is New York City. Mostly we think she succeeded, except for that awful awful awful, sort-of-tie-dyed velvet bedspread thingy in the master bedroom. It's just way too Grateful Dead for our rather delicate (and way less hippy-dippy) decorative sensibilities.

Other owners of apartments at the Park Imperial include New Age guru Deepak Chopra and Puff Daddy (or Diddle Faddle or Diddy Doit or whatever name music industry bigwig and entrepreneur Sean Combs goes by nowadays). The building has also long attracted high-profile temporary tenants who've included British-born beau-hunk movie star Daniel Craig and notoriously profligate but somewhat mysterious Malaysian businessman/playboy Taek Jho Low.

The Architectural Digest article revealed Mister and Missus Meloni moved to Midtown from downtown in order that their couple of young kids could grow up in easy proximity to the green and grass of Central Park. We're not sure why just five years later they'd opt to move and we freely admit we have no inside intel on the matter but iffin we were the betting type?and we're most certainly not?we'd wager out long-bodied bitches Linda and Beverly the Meloni clan would like to decamp to bigger digs, perhaps something with private outdoor space but also with sensational Central Park Views. We shall see, butter beans. We shall see.